Timbaland
For a while back there I was obsessed with Timbaland's output. Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a really useful article on him in The Wire which was the twin to his excellent piece on Premier. In itself it was a handy bit of cultural transgression. From that I learned about the more obscure stuff here, the Total, Playa and more recherche Ginuwine tracks. All of these pictured are masterpieces.
In recent years however, Timbaland has outstayed his welcome. A little bit of me died when I saw him with that Nelly Furtado bird, also on hearing the latest awful Bjork record. I'm only glad that nothing resulted in his mooted collaboration with the utterly dreadful MIA. My obsessive interest tailed off after the epoch-defining "Get UR Freak On" in 2001, and was only briefly revived with Missy's deliriously wonderful "Work It" the following year. After that, nada.
Still he's an important part of Hip-Hop and there's a similarity to what was achieved with Cold Chillin'. Timbaland's stuff was glitzy, yet retained a thoroughly unconventional edge. There's a generosity to his thing that extended as far as troubling with record sleeves. Missy and Aaliyah are not just musicians, they're stars whose images can fill a twelve-inch frame. So many of the American "Urban" records I've picked up in the last five years, you couldn't begin to compile their sleeves, and that reflects the fact that in posterity those records will be remembered as mercilessly functional club bangers.